Gone digital

The children's book market is moving quickly toward digital, reports the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (via Retailer Daily).

Kids are primed for reading books on a computer and via e-book readers, having grown up with technology like laptops and iPods. They're also able to easily adapt to new gadgets, like the $359 Amazon Kindle, the Oprah-endorsed ebook reader introduced a year ago.

(The Kindle proved to be more popular than Amazon expected and is now out of stock, leaving customers high and dry until February - unless they purchase the slightly more expensive Sony Reader 700.)

Recent reports claim online time has become critical to youth learning and development. Nodding to the positive influences of new technology, publishers like Kidthing and Speakaboo are making digital downloads of children's literature and putting audio versions of children's classics online. Supplemental content, like games and virtual worlds, will follow.

Scholastic created websites and online games to complement book offerings like 39 Clues, a 10-volume mystery-book project.

Publishers also find that digital formats are less expensive to produce and can add extra revenue: Because there is no shipping, printing, or return costs, profits are free to grow.

Digital releases also help print sales. Walden released teen book Savvy on the internet a week before it was available in print, encouraging kids to download the book or read it online. As many as 30 tween website and virtual worlds linked to the download site, helping spread the news of the release via word-of-mouth, which pushed the book to the top of The New York Times bestseller list.

But without direction, a broad array of online offerings may prove destructive, rather than productive, to kids: Young children may not understand what they're reading when they play with gadgets and are distracted by technology features, concluded Temple University psychology professor Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, after studying parents who read digital books with their children.

And staring at a screen instead of imagining stories in their heads, or playing with friends, minimizes active creative play — a big part of their development, said Susan Linn of Boston's Judge Baker Children's Center.

Still, digital book sales are up 73% in October compared with the same month last year, according to the Association of American Publishers. Adult and children's paperbacks, on the other hand, fell 23% and 14.8%, respectively.

At educational publisher Houghton Mifflin, digital books make up just 1% of sales but could easily grow to 10% in five years, said vice-president David Langevin.